The quality of some pre-registration training is “not good enough”, the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has admitted.

Research carried out by the regulator and anecdotal evidence suggest that the quality of pre-registration placements can be “highly variable”, GPhC chair Nigel Clarke told delegates at a Westminster Health Forum event last week (November 17).

While some training is “excellent”, the variation between placements is “really not where we should be”, Mr Clarke stressed. His comments came after a GPhC survey found 89% of hospital pre-registration students who completed their placements in 2013-14 rated the quality of their training as "good" or "very good", compared to 74% of community students.

Fixing this problem will be a “big challenge” that involves "a lot of different organisations...talking to each other", he added.

Mr Clarke’s comments echoed those he made at a GPhC education conference earlier this month (November 10), when he admitted some training is “not ideal”. 

“We all need to have a pretty good look at how pre-reg works. We need to better understand how the structure should [work], who needs to be inputting more, and what we need to do [in] that process,” he said at the time.

England’s chief pharmaceutical officer Keith Ridge used his speech at the same event to predict that some English students may have to pay for their own pre-registration placements in the future.

How could the GPhC improve pre-registration training?

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